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Scientific Linux Security Update : kernel on SL5.x i386/x86_64

This script is Copyright (C) 2012 Tenable Network Security, Inc.

Synopsis :

The remote Scientific Linux host is missing one or more security
updates.

Description :

Security fixes :

- several flaws were found in the way the Linux kernel
CIFS implementation handles Unicode strings. CIFS
clients convert Unicode strings sent by a server to
their local character sets, and then write those strings
into memory. If a malicious server sent a long enough
string, it could write past the end of the target memory
region and corrupt other memory areas, possibly leading
to a denial of service or privilege escalation on the
client mounting the CIFS share. (CVE-2009-1439,
CVE-2009-1633, Important)

- the Linux kernel Network File System daemon (nfsd)
implementation did not drop the CAP_MKNOD capability
when handling requests from local, unprivileged users.
This flaw could possibly lead to an information leak or
privilege escalation. (CVE-2009-1072, Moderate)

- Frank Filz reported the NFSv4 client was missing a file
permission check for the execute bit in some situations.
This could allow local, unprivileged users to run
non-executable files on NFSv4 mounted file systems.
(CVE-2009-1630, Moderate)

- a missing check was found in the hypervisor_callback()
function in the Linux kernel provided by the kernel-xen
package. This could cause a denial of service of a
32-bit guest if an application running in that guest
accesses a certain memory location in the kernel.
(CVE-2009-1758, Moderate)

- a flaw was found in the AGPGART driver. The
agp_generic_alloc_page() and agp_generic_alloc_pages()
functions did not zero out the memory pages they
allocate, which may later be available to user-space
processes. This flaw could possibly lead to an
information leak. (CVE-2009-1192, Low)

Bug fixes :

- a race in the NFS client between destroying cached
access rights and unmounting an NFS file system could
have caused a system crash. 'Busy inodes' messages may
have been logged. (BZ#498653)

- nanosleep() could sleep several milliseconds less than
the specified time on Intel Itanium&reg
-based systems.
(BZ#500349)

- LEDs for disk drives in AHCI mode may have displayed a
fault state when there were no faults. (BZ#500120)

- ptrace_do_wait() reported tasks were stopped each time
the process doing the trace called wait(), instead of
reporting it once. (BZ#486945)

- epoll_wait() may have caused a system lockup and
problems for applications. (BZ#497322)

- missing capabilities could possibly allow users with an
fsuid other than 0 to perform actions on some file
system types that would otherwise be prevented.
(BZ#497271)

- on NFS mounted file systems, heavy write loads may have
blocked nfs_getattr() for long periods, causing commands
that use stat(2), such as ls, to hang. (BZ#486926)

- in rare circumstances, if an application performed
multiple O_DIRECT reads per virtual memory page and also
performed fork(2), the buffer storing the result of the
I/O may have ended up with invalid data. (BZ#486921)

- when using GFS2, gfs2_quotad may have entered an
uninterpretable sleep state. (BZ#501742)

- with this update, get_random_int() is more random and no
longer uses a common seed value, reducing the
possibility of predicting the values returned.
(BZ#499783)

- the '-fwrapv' flag was added to the gcc build options to
prevent gcc from optimizing away wrapping. (BZ#501751)

- a kernel panic when enabling and disabling iSCSI paths.
(BZ#502916)

- using the Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5704 network device with
the tg3 driver caused high system load and very bad
performance. (BZ#502837)

- '/proc/[pid]/maps' and '/proc/[pid]/smaps' can only be
read by processes able to use the ptrace() call on a
given process
however, certain information from
'/proc/[pid]/stat' and '/proc/[pid]/wchan' could be used
to reconstruct memory maps. (BZ#499546)

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